We’ve all been guilty of enjoying a bit of “harmless” gossip, or so we think, at someone else’s expense. However, I’ve come to realise that gossip isn’t as harmless as you may think. It has a damaging effect on your mental health. As well as being unkind and negative towards other people.

Gossiping involves making conversation about other people’s private lives, personalities, or actions. Often in an unkind or judgmental way, and more often than not, it spreads untrue information.

Just because someone is telling you something exciting, shocking, or entertaining about another person’s life does not make it true. More often than not, stories are twisted, exaggerated, or made up and can be changed from person to person much like Chinese whispers.

To live a positive and healthy lifestyle, you need to free yourself from entertaining and engaging with idle gossip. Start by challenging yourself today to not listen to or join in with any gossip that comes your way. You will see how much it is a part of our everyday lives and how negative it can really be.

Gossiping has countless negative effects on your mental health, personality, and character. If you want to live the life of your dreams and be the best possible version of yourself, you need to leave gossiping behind. Start distancing yourself from people who love to put other people down.

Gossiping Affects Your Mental Health

Your health isn’t just determined by what you eat or how much you work out. It’s made up of how you spend your time, and how you talk to yourself and others. It’s what you watch, the conversations you have, and everything else that makes up your day-to-day life.

When you’re spending your days gossiping about other people it has a damaging effect on your mental health over time. You can’t continually have negative conversations and interactions with others and live a positive and fulfilled life.

You may find that it’s harmless to participate in idle gossip with others. However, it lowers your energy, creates negative thoughts, and fills your brain with useless noise and junk.

Start opening yourself up to higher and more positive ways of thinking. Free your mind of meaningless encounters and thoughts. Start thinking bigger and about more important things.

Stop gossiping and start being more mindful of your conversations and interactions with others. This will change the way you portray yourself and view the world. Ultimately, you will improve your self-esteem, energy levels, confidence, happiness, focus, and mental well-being. You will become more mindful and conscious of how you’re interacting and engaging with other people.

Gossiping Attracts Negativity

You cannot live a positive and healthy lifestyle if you’re always focusing on gossiping about other people and putting others down. Negativity attracts more negativity into your life. Therefore, stop spending your time engaging with small-minded people. People who like to discuss other people all the time will attract low energy and negativity into your life.

The people who love to gossip to you about other people, enjoy putting other people down and being negative towards others. More often than not, they will also be gossiping about you behind your back as well.

Instead of giving in to entertaining people’s gossiping, use that time you would be spent joining in, to focus on your goals or your work. If you’re known at your workplace to love gossip, then this will harm how other people view you. Therefore, it can halt any chances of progression because no one likes being around negativity unless they’re unhappy with themselves.

Think About the Other Person’s Feelings

It’s so easy to get so caught up in the exciting or entertaining gossip that you forget that it’s a real-life person you’re talking about, They have feelings and don’t deserve their life to be a source of your entertainment.

Gossiping can stem from truth but a lot of the time it’s exaggerated or twisted to make it sound more exciting than it actually may be. That’s how rumours are started and false stories are spread around about people.

It’s not fair to talk about people behind their backs because they don’t have a chance to tell you the truth or their version of the story. Therefore, the next time you’re tempted to join in with gossiping, think about the other person’s feelings. Talk about and treat others how you’d like to be treated and talked about in return.

What other people are doing should not be of concern to you if it’s not directly negatively affecting you. It’s irrelevant what other people are doing. Focus your energy on yourself and make yourself and your life the best it can possibly be.

Treat People How You Would Like to be Treated

You may join in with gossiping as a way to make you feel like you fit in with others and that it’s a harmless way of getting involved in conversations and interacting with others.

However, the truth is that you’re more likable if you don’t give in to gossiping. It doesn’t make you a better person, interesting, cool, or funny, simply being a sheep and giving in to idle gossip.

You need to always treat people how you’d like to treat yourself and focus your time and energy on improving yourself and your life.

When you don’t allow the negative energy of gossiping into your life, it sets you apart from other people. It makes you kinder, more trustworthy, reliable, honest, and supportive.

When you stop wasting your time on mindless gossiping, it frees up your brain to think about the type of person you want to be. Who you want to become, how you want to treat others, and what kind of conservations your best self would want to have.

When you treat people how you’d like to be treated yourself and stop gossiping about other people, you will have to discover more interesting things to say. Therefore, this will help to attract more positivity and kindness into your life. Not only will you be treating people how you’d like to be treated yourself, but you will attract the same back into your life. This will attract more positive and meaningful interactions with others.

The Gossip Might not Even be True

More often than not, the stories and gossip you hear about other people never tend to be accurate. Remember, you don’t always know what’s true. You only see what people want you to see and you only hear one side of the story. Therefore, what you hear about other people might not even be true.

Moreover, at the end of the day, what other people do is none of your business. You don’t have the right to judge other people. Therefore, start using your energy and time to focus on bettering yourself. Stop giving in to idle gossip because you’re more likely than not going to be spreading false stories about other people. You could use your time and energy more positively.

Surround Yourself With Positive and Uplifting People

To live a positive and happy lifestyle you need to be a positive and uplifting person and surround yourself with like-minded people.

It’s important to remember that putting other people down doesn’t raise you or make you any better than them. It simply lowers your energy and makes other people view you in a negative light.

Therefore, surrounding yourself with people who uplift you and who are a positive influence in your life will help you to attract better things into your life.

If you’re spending your time and energy on people who love to be negative and put other people down, then you’re inviting them to do the same thing to you. You don’t know what they might be saying about you behind your back.

Stop focusing on what other people are doing. Remove yourself from conversations that involve gossiping about other people.

You are a combination of the five people you spend the most time around and interact with. So, if you’re interacting with someone who puts other people down and is low energy then you’re attracting negativity into your life.

“Make a habit of shutting down conversations that aim to tear others down.”– Unknown

Summary

You may be unaware of how much you give into gossiping throughout your day. However, by being more mindful and looking out for negativity around you, you can start improving your mindset and interactions with others.

Start removing yourself from negativity and idle gossiping. Start using your energy and voice for more positive and uplifting interactions with others. Remember, the more mindful you are of your conversations, actions, and reactions to others, the more you can create the kind of relationships and uplifting positive interactions you desire.

Gossiping only brings negativity into your life. Therefore, it’s time to start being positive and kinder to those around you. Always ask yourself if you’d be happy with someone else talking about you the way you’re speaking about them and their life. If the answer is no, then it’s time to change your mindset and how you spend your days communicating with others.

Change your conversations to uplifting, inspiring, and motivational ones that make you feel good about life and yourself. You’ll never make yourself happier or better than someone else by putting them down.

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”– Socrates

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